Just finished this week’s This Is Us family therapy session. (The best show on TV in years.) There’s a joke in my house that I don’t like to feel the feels. Well, tonight’s episode brought all the feels.

And, it made me think about why I am a foster parent.

1. I want children. I don’t know why My wife and I have struggled with infertility these past 13 years. God knows. And it would be an amazing life just the two of us. But like many, I want children. She wants children. We have love in our hearts and space in our home and it’s ok to want that. Many times, foster/adoptive parents think, or are told, this desire to be a parent is too selfish. It’s not. It’s ok to want to a child to love.

2. God called me to it. Fostering wasn’t on my radar until God clearly and undeniably set up many events and occurrences in my life to naturally turn my attention in this direction. He works best supernaturally natural. This is what I’m to do. No more noble than saving the bees, flowers or trees. Everybody has a thing God has called them to do. For me, this is it.

3. The children are worth it. Children don’t enter care by their own doing. They didn’t choose this path. Foster care isn’t punishment. It’s an unfortunate result of their parents inability to care for them. These kids need love. They need (and crave) boundaries. They deserve families. Sometimes they arrive as beautiful diamonds encased in a world of hurt. Watching them emerge from that prison and become all God intended them to be is an extraordinary privilege.

3 Responses to 3 Reasons I Foster (And Adopted)

I foster because I can! And I want to! Haha so many people ask my why in the world we put ourselves through this and many believe it’s because I can’t conceive but the truth is, it’s none of their business! That point aside, we would still choose to foster because there are too many kids in need, and they didn’t ask for this, so it takes caring adults to jump in and say “I’m here because I want to be, for you”, and also, because God called me to it at just 12yrs old, He put it in my heart so how could I say no? ❤